


poetry that has not been written yet

by lanyon



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F, F/M, cross-dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:45:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rosaline is a little girl, she likes flowers and pretty things. She likes old books, with cracked leather binding, with pages filled with fairy tales or intrigues or household accounts. She likes the curve of her cousin’s smile. She likes the sound of her laugh. She likes the sound of her name. She sounds it out. Juliet. <i>Juli</i>-et. It rhymes with <i>well-met</i>, <i>regret</i>. </p>
<p>It rhymes with poetry that has not been written yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	poetry that has not been written yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



Rosaline wears doublets and tights. She wears a red velvet cap to hide all her luxurious hair, the colour of dull flame and gleaming amber. Her ankles, shapely, numbering two, are hidden in cunning leather boots. She is not, now, Rosaline. She is not, now, a Capulet. 

She watches the boys from the wrong side of Verona. It is strange that all sides are the wrong side; there is no right. They have no right to run about the way they do. She, as Rosaline, has no right to a profession though she is certain she would make a most competent doctor, or lawyer. She has no right to take a wife, lacking as she does (she is not lacking).

.

When Rosaline is a little girl, she likes flowers and pretty things. She likes old books, with cracked leather binding, with pages filled with fairy tales or intrigues or household accounts. She likes the curve of her cousin’s smile. She likes the sound of her laugh. She likes the sound of her name. She sounds it out. Juliet. _Juli_ -et. It rhymes with _well-met_ , _regret_. 

It rhymes with poetry that has not been written yet.

.

When Rosaline is a little older, old enough, old enough to know better, her Nurse finds her bathing with one of the servant’s daughters. The maid is beaten and Rosaline’s lips still tingle while her mother paces, horrified, and Rosaline is dragged to confession, for impure thoughts and impure deeds and there is only one penance. 

Rosaline will join the convent. She is a lesser Capulet and they will not lose much if she does not marry. 

She does not wish to marry. 

She dresses in a doublet and tights and hides her glowing ember hair beneath a black velvet cap and she goes where the men go. Their bawdy jokes do not disgust her but neither do they interest her. She sits at the end of a long wooden table and she nurses her wine, unwatered and heady, and a passing tavern wench smiles at her. 

.

She sits in the drawing room with Juliet and their cousins. Juliet is the candle and the rest are all dowdy moths. 

“Your hair,” says Juliet, fascinated. “It is most unusual.” 

.  
 _Flame-haired Beauty Joins Nunnery._

They do not shout it on the street corners of Verona, oh no. 

Romeo is dead, and Juliet too. 

Rosaline thinks she hates them both. 

Paris is dead, and Tybalt too; Mercutio and Lady Montague. 

The old men still linger. It takes more than tragedy to crack cold stone. 

.

Rosaline goes to Juliet. She has dessert wine, golden and too sweet, and they pass the bottle back and forth. 

“Should you like to get married?” asks Juliet. 

“Yes,” says Rosaline. “To you.” 

Juliet does not laugh. She ducks her head and her dark hair falls over her wine-reddened cheeks. “I do not think they would let us,” she says. 

Rosaline is cheerful and she cups Juliet’s cheek. Juliet’s eyelashes are dark smudges on her perfect cheekbones. Juliet rhymes with _not yet_. 

“When I am a lawyer,” she says, “or a judge. I will change the rules so that I may marry you.” 

Juliet presses her lips to Rosaline’s palm. “When you are a lawyer,” she says, “I will be your wife.”

.

She uses billiard balls to shape her tights. She likes how they feel. She walks differently. 

“You have soft hands, boy,” says a tavern maid. 

“Soft,” says Rosaline, in the low voice she has practised. “For loving.” 

The tavern maid blushes and Rosaline is fascinated.

.

“We were mistaken,” says Rosaline’s mother, all black lace and grief. “You need not give your life to God.”

Do you think He will not have me, mother?

“You have a gentleman caller.”

It is Benvolio; poor lost Benvolio who followed Romeo about like a puppy, yet with more sense than all the dead young men. 

“Fair Rosaline-”

“I am not a light in these dark times,” says Rosaline. 

They all wear black; it is dreary. Her gown of crushed velvet is heavy, with sorrow and excess fabric. It is not the season for sadness. 

“You were Romeo’s beloved,” says Benvolio. 

“Romeo was enamoured with the idea of me,” says Rosaline. “I was a dress rehearsal and nothing more. Romeo could practise his lines and risk nothing but a little pride.” 

It is wrong to speak ill of the dead and Benvolio’s expression is shuttered, like the Montague estate, where weeds already grow between the flagstones. 

.

Rosaline hears of a lady in Venice who plays the lawyer for the sake of the love of a man. It is not a noble pursuit.

.

“I thought, perhaps, that you and Tybalt,” says Juliet, one night.

Rosaline glides her fingers over the line of Juliet’s collarbone, down her upper arm, drifting all the way to Juliet’s wrist, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in her wake. “I have no deep love for our kinsmen,” she says. “No deeper than a puddle.” 

“And for our kinswomen?”

“For my kinswoman,” says Rosaline, slowly and deliberately, “My love is deeper than oceans.”

“Where did you learn such pretty words?” asks Juliet and she does not know about Rosaline’s doublet and cap. 

Rosaline lowers her lips to Juliet’s wrist, where her pulse flutters. It reminds Rosaline of a long-ago summer when she found a dormouse, cornered by a cat. She picked it up and felt its heart thumping wildly in its chest, a wild flickering in her palm. She does not remember if the dormouse lived. She hopes it did but her father told her that, sometimes, wild things that are unexpectedly trapped die of fright

Juliet is not cornered. Juliet is not trapped. She smiles at Rosaline and strokes her fingers through Rosaline’s hair. “Such pretty words,” she says. “If you were a man-”

Rosaline’s mouth lingers on Juliet’s skin; she noses at the crook of Juliet’s arm and Juliet laughs breathlessly.

“Rosaline,” she says. “ _Rosaline_.”

Rosaline is not a man.

.

Romeo is handsome but he does not excite Rosaline; not the way that Juliet does, or the way that the men in the tavern do, or the way that the serving maids do, with their knowing smiles and long, smudging eyelashes. 

Juliet does not ask about Romeo and she must know. He sends embarrassing bouquets and bad poetry. 

Rosaline thinks that maybe he is not old enough to love, though she sees him with Mercutio, at times, and wonders.

.

Benvolio does not love her. He is clinging to his dead friend’s truth and the inevitable end of the great houses of Capulet and Montague.

.

She unlaces a serving maid’s corset. She puts her mouth on her breasts as they quiver. 

“There’s no need to be so gentle, sir,” says the maid. “I don’t mind if you’re not.” 

.  
Juliet should have married Paris. Rosaline should have joined a convent and maybe she will, now that only gravestones and white, bleached bones remain. 

Verona mourns her dead heroes and Rosaline could laugh. Romeo was no hero; he had too much heart. Juliet was no hero; she could have lived.

.

“You are terrible,” says Juliet, laughing. “That poor man.”

“Boy,” says Rosaline. “He is a little boy, playing at manhood.”

She does not say that she plays it better.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide to LittleRaven. I hope you have enjoyed this - thank you for such a wonderful prompt.   
> Huge thanks to R, R, B, S and D for the encouragement (it takes a village, etc).


End file.
